"But knives and booze, yoga and booze, 13 mile runs and booze? What’s next to be liquored up: CPR training? Puppy ballet class? (Not really a thing, but someone should get on it.) Is there nothing so inherently absorbing or high-stakes or pleasurable that we won’t try to alter our natural response to it? Maybe women are so busy faking it — to be more like a man at work, more like a porn star in bed, more like 30 at 50 — that we don’t trust our natural responses anymore. Maybe all that wine is an Instagram filter for our own lives, so we don’t see how sallow and cracked they’ve become." Writer Kristi Coulter on making it to "the other side of the pool."
posted by sallybrown
on Aug 17, 2016 -
55 comments

How Marsala Wine Became an Italian Typical Product:"It is not by chance that, when in the 1960s a “Protected Denomination of Origin” system was established, Marsala was the first Italian product to obtain such recognition. The history of this wine and the role that it plays in the international commerce since the end of the 19th c., is however strongly reliant on merchants and entrepreneurs that were not Italian, but English."
posted by Drinky Die
on May 12, 2016 -
7 comments

“The first glass of wine is all about the food, the second glass is about love and the third glass is about mayhem.” Brazilian photographer Marcos Alberti on his project 3 Taças Depois
posted by chavenet
on Apr 9, 2016 -
16 comments

Why More Men Are Drinking Pink "You go to a table where people are sitting outside and they're like, 'I'll take a magnum of Bedell,' and maybe it's seven dudes and you're a little surprised. You thought you were going to be talking to them about scotch, but they want some Provence rosé, and that's totally cool."
posted by Shmuel510
on Jun 17, 2015 -
260 comments

“Diamonds are easier to trace than wine,” says Jason Hernandez, a former U.S. attorney who prosecuted one of the largest wine counterfeiting cases in 2013. “Even if you’re looking at something like a 1982 Château Lafite,” he says, referring to what oenophiles consider one of the best wines in the world from one of the best years, “they made 20,000 cases of that wine. How do you tell one bottle from the next?”

Château Hough is a "microappellation" vinyard and winery that occupies three ¼ acre city lots in Cleveland's inner city Hough neighborhood. . . . a confluence of social empowerment and environmental stewardship goals, more than just growing grapes.

We have a strong, razor-sharp purpose. . . . That purpose, all along, has been to employ the formerly incarcerated, teach youth viticulture, and create more economic opportunity in a neighborhood that doesn't have enough.

I used to be a regular at a wine bar in San Clemente, a beach town in California where my wife and I lived when we were first married. The ‘Tuscan’ decor of the place was a little too vivid for my taste, but the wine was priced right and the owner was a great conversationalist. He would tell us stories from behind the bar about his travels to vineyards in Chile and New Zealand, and he had a charming populist streak. When people got too pretentious about the wine, he would roll his eyes and say: ‘Relax, it’s just a beverage.’
He was wrong about that, of course. Since its invention more than 8,000 years ago, wine has always been more than just a beverage.

"The idea that Medieval people drank beer or wine to avoid drinking bad water is so established that even some very serious scholars see no reason to document or defend it; they simply repeat it as a settled truth. In fact, if no one ever documents the idea, it is for a very simple reason: it's not true."
posted by jedicus
on Feb 27, 2014 -
84 comments

Bostonians Tyler Balliet and Morgan First love wine. Drinking it, talking about it, introducing other people to it. But wine, unfortunately, is often perceived to have an attitude, a culture of snottiness and pretension that puts people off before they even get close to a wine glass. Why swirl it? What's with that obnoxious sucking sound? What the hell is the deal with spitting it out? What about the confusing vocabulary and snooty descriptors? When did wine become "sassy" or "understated", instead of "delicious"? [more inside]
posted by MissySedai
on Apr 30, 2013 -
127 comments

Archie's Recipes - When my grandparents passed away my family rediscovered an old family recipe book that my great grandfather wrote by hand in an old ledger. [via mefi projects]
posted by item
on Jan 5, 2013 -
17 comments

Hula-Hoop comedy show Annabel Carberry performs "A Glass of Red". This is a hilarious hula-hoop/dance routine about frustration, hula-hoop talent, keping your skirt down and control of a roudy audience.
posted by naight
on Jul 27, 2012 -
18 comments

In 1978, US President Carter signed H.R. 1337, which, among other things, provided an exemption from excise taxes on up to 100 gallons of homemade wine and beer annually. It was still up to the individual states to decide whether or not to allow their citizens to brew.

33 years later, homebrewing is a very popular hobby, legal almost all states.

"The most important event in the history of wine." Boutique winemaker Bill Wertzberger announces a rather expensive new line of wine. "If you ever find a bottle of wine more expensive ... we will retroactively bill you for the difference, plus a few thousand dollars. Just to make sure that you have the most expensive bottle of wine in the world."
posted by woodblock100
on Nov 21, 2010 -
32 comments

Have you ever wondered why you can't get what you want, but, if you try sometimes, etc.? Mark Hicken, a British Colombian lawyer, is a great source of information on the state(s) of Canadian liquor regulations. Sure, a little localised and dry, but that's the terroir, man. Also, he does point out some inanities that have a relatively universal appeal.
posted by converge
on Dec 10, 2009 -
27 comments

Alternative wine closures are being resisted. Alcoa's new glass stopper with Dupont's vinyl ring costs nearly the same as a cork (50¢ to 70¢ each), but requires new bottling machines. Although cheaper screw caps also prevent undesirable compounds from tainting wine, and eliminates the need for horizontal storage, they change the purist aspect of the bottle and are not biodegradable. Naturalists point out the problem of having cork forests disappear in the Mediterranean region from low demand.
posted by Brian B.
on Aug 30, 2009 -
97 comments

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